In the Mourning
by tatooinesun
Summary: Malachor is destroyed, its remains scattered to the stars. Amidst a thousand shattered pieces, Atton and the Exile make something with what's left behind.
1. Chapter 1

In its final destruction, Malachor V makes no sound. Dane Surik watches it from the safe distance she's told Bao-Dur to suspend the Hawk, a beautiful ruination of light and rock and pulsating energy - resolute, as she'd been on the bridge of a warship in this same orbit several lifetimes ago.

The only thing audible is her long awaited expel of breath, a release. But in the force, Malachor's death is so loud it's deafening. In the force it convulses and screams and shatters with such a cacophony of noise that she feels her knees shake and then give under the vibration, like the frail limb of a tree, recoiled in the wind before snapping entirely. Malachor has always been Dane and Dane has always been Malachor and when it ends it takes a piece of her with it. She didn't know there was anything left to take.

She fumbles for the first solid purchase she can get and finds it on Bao-Dur's shoulder. His eyes are unmoving from the destruction, the map of his face illuminated in a veil of green light, but the palm that covers her own hand isn't passive - it's as steady and supportive as he's always been. He's looking for stable ground too. He's a tether, a safe place to land. A ruined mess of hidden scars and memories and half-formed regrets guarded behind a cultivated composure, but so is she, and that's why they'll always understand each other.

"I was here with you at the beginning, General, and I'm here with you at the end," he says softly, still looking out into the vacuum of ruined warships that stand as a grim memorial to what they'd done here together.

Dane licks her lips, eyes burning then blurring. She can only do what she had on that bridge ten years ago - nod silently at him.

Soon the others join them in the cockpit to form a crescent of support with her at its core. Mira's touch at her shoulder, Visas' weight at her side. It's a reminder that Malachor hadn't belonged solely to her. They'd all been buried under the weight of the planet's oppressive orbit for so long that to watch it crumble into dust is cathartic. This isn't a true end, she thinks, but it's something close to it, something moving in that direction. She stands in the solidarity her companions provide, thankful she's not facing this moment alone.

But if Kreia's prophecies are to be believed - and something tells Dane that there's credence to them and not just the desperate ruminations of a woman on death's door - they too will scatter like Malachor's remains, fragments lost to the oblivion of space. It's a sobering thought, but not one she is willing to dwell on with more pressing matters at hand.

Two figures are noticeably absent from their cluster in front of the viewport. While bruised and battered, most of her crew had escaped from Malachor without major injury, all save for Atton. His encounter with Sion had incapacitated him severely, and his health and life were still very much in balance.

She'd been the one to find him barely conscious and leaking blood, slumped against a pillar in the academy. He'd babbled brokenly in her ear and she'd hoisted him up, dragged him through crumbling rock and deposited him into Mical's care. His present condition is unknown to her and she swallows around the lump in her throat before detaching herself from the others, turning to Bao-Dur with most of her resolve collected.

When she speaks, it's a General's voice that slips out. "Get us to Telos as fast as possible."

The trance breaks and Malachor releases its hold. Her companions part like shrapnel, and Bao-Dur assents like the obedient soldier he's always been, punching the coordinates into the nav immediately before situating himself in what she's come to associate as Atton's chair. It looks wrong, but she doesn't stare long, hastening out of the cockpit and through the ship towards the medbay.

She's disappointed to find Atton lying supine on the medical table out cold, thought wistfully and perhaps a little high mindedly that her presence alone would rouse him. He looks like pure shit, there's no nuanced way to put it. Lacerations and burns mar his entire body, somewhat healed over due to Mical's ministrations, but still violently discolored.

The worst of it is his face, swollen and purple, his brow split and caked in dried blood. But all of that looks positively juvenile compared to the distinct slash of a lightsaber burn across the left side of his face. It starts at his temple and dips into the hollow of his eye, mercifully shallow but still, nothing on the surface was spared in its wake.

Mical sits on the floor next to the bed with his legs crossed and eyes closed. She can feel tendrils of the force, waves of cool clear energy emanating from his form.

"Am I interrupting?" She asks woodenly from the threshold.

He opens his eyes, looking altogether unsurprised to find her here. "No, no I've healed what I can. I was only meditating. Please, come in."

A small, exhausted smile is spared as he climbs to his feet, still exuding a nerve-eating serenity that often renders images in Dane's mind of socking him unconcious. It's entirely undeserved. Mical has a good heart and holds a moral high ground over ninety percent of the passengers on this ship. Barring maybe T3, but even the droid is on thin ice. And yet his demeanor is so reminiscent of the Masters who'd condemned her that she can't help but feel uncomfortable in his presence, especially when he peers at her with those besotted starry eyes of his.

She certainly doesn't need anybody hero worshipping her.

She hesitates in the doorway, as though drawing near and seeing it all in full detail will only solidify Atton's injuries, make it that much more genuine. Instead, she steps inside and stays on the perimeter, anchored with her back to the wall. "How is he?"

Mical's eyes flit from Dane's face to Atton. "Stable for now. But without more advanced equipment I fear his condition may worsen. He needs a kolto tank."

"I've told Bao-Dur to steer us towards Telos. We should arrive in a day and a half, two at the most."

"He should make it then. I've mended what wounds I could, bandaged his ribs," says Mical, hands illustrating his words. "There's some cerebral hemorrhaging that's beyond my power however. His body has gone into shock from the extent of the trauma."

"His eye…"

"Yes. I'm afraid it couldn't be salvaged."

She swallows hard and looks away, immediately begins to count in her head. Not a pazaak deck, but it's distraction enough. Ironically, she wishes that Kreia were here. The woman had been cantankerous, but made for an extremely adept healer.

Mical touches her shoulder gently. "Dane."

She feels detached from her body, as though she were ballooned above the ship and watching all of this unfold from a great distance. "Could I have a moment alone with him?"

For a split second she thinks he might refuse her and her limbs tense in the breath it takes for him to respond. She can feel him looking at her, gauging her like he wants to say something, but she refuses to reciprocate.

"Of course." He leaves silently and lets the door slide closed behind him.

Dane stands in the quiet for a few seconds, and then with slow careful steps, walks towards the bed. She had been right - it's so much worse seeing him like this up close, with every vein, every swollen and broken part of his body magnified in vivid detail.

He'd been equal parts brave and stupid to face Sion by himself.

But being alone with him in this state also sparks a startling degree of intimacy that compels her to take his cold and brittle hand between both of her own.

His last words to her on Malachor weren't just incoherent babbling. There had been self-deprecation, a slew of apologies, and then to punctuate it all he'd told her that he loved her. Had from the moment they'd met. _That_ , that sentiment alone was fucked up.

 _You are a cipher, forming bonds, leeching the life of others, siphoning their will and dominating them._

Atton doesn't know about what happened in the ruined courtyard of the Enclave, what was revealed to her there standing before Kreia and the remains of the Council. And how would she have posed such a revelation to him? How does she go about explaining that his attraction to her is manufactured, that he's being conditioned by the force to form an unnatural devotion to her. Atton was so susceptible, perhaps even more so than the others, because he was an empty vessel waiting to be filled. She'd infused her poison into him so completely and he'd confused it for love.

At his confession, she had been horrified, couldn't pass him over into Mical's arms fast enough. She was noxious for him, she was toxic.

There's a sick, barbarous unfairness to it all because there's a part of her that could love him if she tried, truly and undiluted. But she wouldn't exploit him like this, not when he'd confessed to her before that his greatest fear was being persuaded, used by force users against all will and knowledge.

A sigh shakes her exhausted, willowy frame. Her eyes fall to where his vest is folded neatly on a chair and she leans down, plucks a pack of smokes and a lighter from the pocket she knows he keeps them in.

She spares his motionless form a cursory glance, imagining the utter indignation that would cross his face if he caught her.

"Sorry. I need it more than you do."

While the rest of the crew gets some well deserved rest, Dane sits in the pilot's chair, lighting a cigarra and taking several long drags. The tabac is like kolto to her scattered, restless mind. She'd taken it up during her stint in the Outer Rim, had indulged avidly until her reintroduction to the force. Vices like alcohol and cigarras provided distractions that dimmed her connection, stilted awareness. So she'd weeded them out of her life. It hadn't been hard to quit - granted she had only smoked for a few years, and obviously hasn't sworn it off completely - but she doesn't harp after one if she goes days, weeks without a fix.

In moments of stress, it's a different story. She's a veritable addict, burning through smoke after smoke until her lungs start begging for a reprieve. She figures she's earned the right to indulge a little after everything.

Her boots on the console, she nurses the cigarra in one hand and lets the other hang limply down beside her, blondish head sunk hard into the backrest. Lethargy has seeped into her bones, making her movements worn and sluggish. She feels older than she ever has before, a life away from who she'd been on Peragus, a million times removed from the war-torn girl of her youth, all bared teeth and hackles raised.

She was wild then, notorious for her grit in battle, an unrelenting determination verging on ferocity. And Atris was right. She _had_ enjoyed war, had found herself amidst the fires of conflict even while others suffered and died around her. It was a selfish notion, a common feat in her so contradictory to the expectations of a Jedi. Kavar had disparaged her over it time and time again in that tight lipped but well-intentioned way of his. _You do not consider the effect your actions have on others. You dive head first without thought of the consequences as long as your own odds are guaranteed._

At the time she'd jeered at the notion she was capable of any such fault, pushed him to a boiling point so she could laugh at the flustered countenance her defiance would evoke. She was invincible, she was proud, she was well on her way to General. She was a child. A stupid, selfish child playing at war.

Now Kavar is dead and she's relieved. A man who had taken her under his wing, had treated her with an undeserved amount of compassion and understanding, the likes of which she'd never before been exposed to - she questions that now, as she's questioned all relationships since the nature of her force bond was revealed to her. Still, he was a man she'd come to love and admire and immolate to a varying degree and she's _relieved_ it had been him with the other members of the Council to meet their end in the wreckage of the Enclave, and not her.

Stupid, stupid selfish child.

She snubs her cigarra on the console - it's an old ship what's one more stain? Atton has been ashing his smokes here for months - and lights another.

It's the same old melancholic trill she's been reciting for a decade now. She thought she'd feel different, lighter after Malachor's cataclysm. Thought her transgressions would be sucked away with the planet's collapsing atmosphere in some naïve notion that they directly correlated. Malachor was never a reason, it was a consequence. She doesn't even feel worse than she did before, which would have been a welcome alternative to the mind numbing emptiness that pervades her now.

It would have been poetic to sink with Malachor. It's a thought that's been consuming her slowly, from the moment that the planet's eradication became a possibility, would have been so easy to close her eyes and let it finish what it'd started. No one would fall victim to her influence ever again, no more lives fed to sustain her insatiable, uncontrollable appetite for power.

And yet before she can follow that particular string of thought any further, something distracts her. A new string of an altogether different color, different aura, yet familiar to her all the same. Halcyon like a happy forgotten memory suddenly brought to light. She pursues that chord instead and smiles when she discovers its source.

 _Hi Atton_.

Whether he'd sought her mind out consciously or not doesn't matter; she can feel him as clearly and tangibly as though he were sitting right beside her, sharing a bottle of Corellian whiskey and dealing her a hand of pazaak. Just like old times.

 _It's all doom and gloom up here. You might want to go back to the medbay._

He's still a novice at projecting his own thoughts to her, regardless of his proficiency at blocking everyone else out, but she can hear his mocking cadence in her ear so clearly that she wonders if he's made a sudden breakthrough or if she can merely predict his responses that accurately.

 _And spend all night cooped up in there with blondie? Not fucking likely._

She laughs genuinely, pulling her legs close and hugging her knees to her chest. Reaching out like this, amassing at least a sliver of strength to attempt communication intentionally or otherwise: it's a good sign. She hadn't been able to find him earlier, had barely felt any presence in him at all. It'd terrified her initially but she knows what his impromptu visit is trying to relay to her now - he's still here.

She shoves her guilt aside, compartmentalizes it to draw upon at another time. Illuminated by the blue glow of hyperspace as they hurl towards Telos and curled up with Atton's quiet presence in her mind, sleep finds her easily.

 _AN: Hi all, welcome to my angsty slowburn post-kotor fic I've been wanting to write forever. This game means so much to me but there are going to be some deviations from canon because let's be real, the ending was a big old mess. Remember that Drew Karpyshit guy? I sure don't and you shouldn't either. The chapters are split between Dane's and Atton's perspectives so the next chapter is going to be from Atton's pov and should be posted within a few days or so. I love hearing from readers, so any thoughts/comments are super appreciated._


	2. Chapter 2

Like getting caught in the impact of a pressure bomb, tension envelopes Atton completely.

Air through his mouth, too cold and compressed to be natural. The metallic taste of stale blood on his tongue. A splitting headache, as if someone had taken a mining drill to the base of his skull and went to town. And liquid, suspending, constricting, bearing down all around him. These sensations seep sluggishly into his awareness, like feeling the cold sting of a duracrete floor pressed against his cheek after coming off a bender. He can see now albeit barely, smokey nothing giving way to blinding light, still too obscure and murky to make anything out, as though he's looking at reality through a gauze-like veil.

Must be drowning, he thinks and it's a resigned sort of observation, too foggy and lethargic to do anything about it, so all that's left is to give in. From everything he's heard the experience is supposed to make for an agonizing end, chalked up as one of the worst possible ways to go. But it doesn't feel as bad as all that, and resigned to his fate as he is, it's a welcome transition from the invariable sunken state he'd elapsed into. Living had gotten old and he was tired, tired of all the war, of all the deaths, all the running. Now he's weightless and none of that matters. Now he's inconsequential.

It'd been getting better there right at the end, sure - Dane had given him something tangible to consider sticking around for. Seeing her safely through their journey had been a nice incentive to work towards, and there was that tiny light he'd sometimes entertain holed up alone in the cockpit while the others slept, that after all this was over he might build a life near her or around her or, on nights when the light was exponentially brighter, with her.

But it was a dim flame to fan and probably best left snuffed out by Sion's unrelenting grip on his throat, the blistering rake of his blade across Atton's skin. His skull cracked against a stone pillar with his guts spilling out into his hands and the only thing he could think was that at least if Sion was here wailing on him, he was far away from Dane.

That was his whole purpose, really. At least the one he'd established for himself that night in the corner of a seedy Nar Shaddaa hole-in-the-wall. He was running away from all this, or trying to work up the courage to, and she'd found him there, slipped into the booth beside him and stolen his drink in typical Dane fashion. He'd come clean to her about who he used to be and she'd listened steelily. When he was finished she'd stirred the contents of her cup in silence, downed it (five jolts he'd counted in the slope of her throat), and told him to come back with her to the Hawk. That was the moment he knew he'd defend her life indefinitely, even if it would most likely come down to costing him his own.

Well Jaq, you always have to be right.

And then without warning he ascends, like someone has heard his grousing and grappled him from the depths against all will or desire to fling him back into a state of existence.

Atton's first gulps of real air come as pathetic sputtering heaves for breath, eyes bulging like a selkath on glitterstim. The open air is frigid on impact with his skin, still sopping wet with liquidized kolto, and he shivers uncontrollably. Rays of white light, too bright to make anything out obfuscate his vision, but he can feel mechanical appendages supporting his frame, maneuvering him to rest against some new surface with a surprising degree of strength.

"The hell is this?" Atton stutters through chattering teeth.

The droid's voice modulator hums a note of static before responding. An older unit then. That's real reassuring.

"Do not move patient. You have been submerged in a kolto tank for twelve standard hours. Relay your unsease to this unit on a scale from one to ten."

He finds little comfort in the droid's pre-programmed bedside manner. What's the number for 'I've been stuck in a kolto tank for twelve hours, what do you think bolts-for-brains'?

Instead he groans and tries to lift an arm to shield his eyes from the light, but it refuses to budge. Holy fuck, he feels weak.

The droid remains unperturbed. "That response is to be expected. You have been in a comatose state for three days, coming back to yourself will take some getting used to. This unit's designation is VD-92."

"I don't care.

He has no amount of strength for facets like dignity when the droid strips him of his briefs in exchange for a flimsy medical gown, barely comprehends the transition to a new, smaller room with beeping machines and and a rock hard bed, but his body is heavy and solid duracrete would make for as good a place as any to rest right about now. His head hurts like hell, the rest of him too, but his face in particular feels like it's been hastily reassembled after being stomped to jelly, throbbing and swaying like it doesn't belong on his body.

Mindful of his injuries, the droid meddles about with medicine and kolto patches while Atton stares up at the ceiling, or rather a blurry white mass he assumes is the ceiling - could be the back of his hand for all he can make out. He's poked with needles and stitches but the kolto leaves him in a numb, near trance induced state and he only notices that he's finally alone long after the medical unit has departed. It's quiet here, save for the moderated beeps of his heart rate.

He's still not entirely sure where here is but he can trifle with technicalities later. The siren call of his heavy lids is strong and he drifts off without much care if he wakes up again or not.

Atton does wake up again and unfortunately for him, the pain meds must have worked their way out of his system because every nerve in his body is on fire with the renewed heat of a thousand supernovas. It manifests as a grunt, then a groan and pretty soon he's gripping the mattress with slick and sweaty palms, glancing around for that blasted droid to come pump him full of drugs again already. What the hell was its designation anyway, CD...BV…?

The sensation is reaching beyond his threshold of pain when he hears the mechanical clank of the door slide open. He has to shift his head to look, expecting to see the medical droid skittering through with a dosage of symoxin. Instead in walks an Ithorian in a white doctor's getup clutching a datapad to her side.

"Hello Atton. I am Dr. Edo," she introduces herself in accented basic and crosses the room to stand at his bedside. Long, slender fingers run across the screen of her datapad with impressive speed, but her eyes stay focused on him, inspecting him. "Do you know where you are?"

Atton's sight is marginally better now, still blurry and narrow like he's wearing blinders, but if he shifts his head around he can take in his surroundings without issue. The room is stark white with the sterile aesthetic of a hospital, so he can hypothesize about the building without much effort. Windowless, sparse and reeking of antiseptic. The lights are bright, bright enough that he can feel the sharp rays digging behind the sockets of his eyes like a blade. Before he can ponder much more, the doctor strings together the rest for him.

"This is Citadel Station. You are currently in Medical Module 076, more specifically the Intensive Care Unit."

His brain is muggy, clouded and he lags behind the conversation for a few stunted seconds. "Telos?"

"Correct."

As if she can sense the waves of discomfort rolling off of him, Dr. Edo sets aside her datapad and takes several minutes to administer a new cocktail of painkillers into his arm. The alleviation is near instantaneous and the tension from his body subsides. All his muscles go lax as he sinks into the mattress with a relieved sigh. Bottle some of that stuff, pawn it off on Nar Shaddaa and you could be living like the king of that garbage scow in no time.

"You were brought here having sustained extensive physical trauma, mostly from a lightsaber. Your vitals were dire when you arrived, but the kolto tank has sped the healing process substantially. However, there are some residual complications we need to discuss." The doctor sits, datapad returned to her lap and this time her gaze flickers between the screen and his face as she relays information. Right down to business then. She has a matter-of-fact way of speaking, like no matter what she tells Atton, he'll nod his head and take it in stride without interjection.

"Most of your wounds will heal over time with only minor cosmetic damage. But your left eyeball sustained severe trauma, and we had to remove it. Enucleation, it's called."

"My eye?" He mumbles numbly, lips dry and cracking and suddenly his constricting tunnel vision and sensitivity to the tinny fluorescent lighting makes sense.

"There are options. We have a wide variety of prosthetic eyes, or you could opt for a patch instead. We can discuss it more as your treatment progresses. I'd like to keep you here for at least another 72 hours to monitor you further and begin rehabilitation."

He supposes in time (and when the pain meds subside) the loss will process to something tangible he can grieve over. But his current state of existence feels so suspended and surreal, like this is all some kind of sterile purgatory made just for him, that his mind does the emotional equivalent of shrugging it off.

"The people who brought me here. Where are they?" he presses.

The doctor's got a stoic face that would have her cleaning out any game of pazaak easy and if she's taken aback by how abruptly he moves on, she doesn't show it.

"Still on the station as far as I know. Admiral Cede sectioned off several apartments in the Residential Module. We will inform them of your improving condition." The doctor stood. "Until then, rest. If you need anything there's a buzzer to your left that will signal me or our medical unit Veedee."

He feels a strange obligation to offer some kind of stilted thank you - thanks for earning your paycheck doc, the hell does he want to thank her for - but all he gets out is a typical tongue in cheek remark. "Doctor Circuits is two fuses short of a haywire. Ever think of restaffing?"

"Our resources are limited, unfortunately, but you are still in one piece are you not?"

He grunts noncommittally and thinks she might have cracked something approaching a smile.

He spends the next couple of days drifting in and out of consciousness, obliging to roll over for kolto patches and new bandages when prompted but incapable of doing much else.

He's slowly growing to accommodate his new monocular vision, having undergone a procedure already to retrofit the empty socket with a solid lining so the left side of his face won't collapse. It all sounded very dramatic.

Now there's just a square white bandage covering the empty socket. He catches it in the reflection of his tray when the droid delivers his meals, after he's fumbled around with utensils reaching for forks and spoons that turn out to be a few inches more to the left than he initially perceives. It's a lot like someone is consistently fucking with him - moving around objects, blinding his peripheral, pushing things in his way just to frustrate him.

In these moments Sion's parting words to him playback through Atton's mind like a broken holorecord, I will remake you. So when I look upon you it shall be like a mirror . He's taken to avoiding his reflection now, shoves the tray at the droid as soon as he's done eating off of it.

He really hates hospitals.

It's something he's had to discover about himself, he's never spent any extended amount of time in one before. In the war they'd patch you up right there in the muddy trenches with a medpac and a slap on the back. And Nar Shaddaa never had anything appropriating a clinic, not one you were liable to come out with all your organs intact anyway. So he'd learned to cauterize and stitch his own wounds, had the raised white scars across his skin to show for it, but at least he'd managed to hang onto both his kidneys. The rattling in his chest every time he takes a breath tells him even if he did manage to bust out of here, his current set of injuries wouldn't exactly be a patch and go job.

Aside from the pain, there's also an unsettling degree of vulnerability. Every bout of wakefulness brings an exposed sort of anxiety like he's coming out of another hibernation in the kolto tank. Panicked and sweating and gripping listlessly around for the blade he always stuffs beneath his mattresses. Eventually he processes his surroundings and remembers the stern faced refusal from the good doctor when he'd asked for a hunting knife, or at the very least his blaster back.

She'd informed him that he was perfectly safe here, impervious from any outside danger, but it's not what's outside that sends him jolting awake in a frenzy every night.

The crew of the Hawk straggles in the next couple of days to deliver disjointed and vaguely awkward well-wishes. Mira punches his shoulder hard enough to evoke a movement of intervention from the droid, tells him never to pull something like that again or she'll "shove a torpedo up his ion engine". Bao-Dur hands him a long list of topline prosthetic eyes and while the gesture is admittedly a thoughtful one, Atton has no intention of ever touching it.

Dane is absent from his ensemble of visitors and what makes it even worse is that he can still feel her, distant and familiar oscillations of energy just beyond the confines of the clinic. But he doesn't blame her for staying away. The seconds between his near fatal defeat to Sion and the pitch blackness that followed are muddled and faded at best, but his last words to her have stayed with him. They had been the words of a dying man, a man choking out his confession with a mouth full of blood. He never thought he'd still be around to face the consequences of them.

Six days after his admittance into the med bay, he wakes up - like some part of him knows that Dane is there - to find her sitting on the edge of his bed staring down at him with hooded eyes. It feels like an eternity since they've last seen each other, and in that time he's forgotten just how beautiful he finds her. Even if she looks tired, frailer and reminiscent of back when they'd met on Peragus, like all that healing that she'd done in between had unraveled and she's hollow inside all over again.

"Hey." His voice is croaky and dry from disuse. He tries to sit up but every action is still laborious so he sinks back down into the mattress again, head swimming from the exertion. "You been avoiding me?"

Except for a frail smile she doesn't answer him, instead lifts up his pack of cigarras into view and gives it a light shake. "Brought you a get well soon present."

He barks a laugh at the irony of her offering given their current location, and his ribs immediately ache in protest. "You're a dirty thief."

"And you weren't in any state to argue. Or use them. Is he going to sound an alarm if I light one up?" Dane jerks a thumb to where Veedee is slumped dormant against the adjacent wall.

"Nah, it's on the fritz. Won't lift a finger unless you put me in another coma."

"Tempting."

She retrieves a cigarra from the pack and lights it deftly. Then to his surprise, leans forward and lodges the roll between his lips. By instinct, his hand seeks it out and goes through the motions automatically. It's about the best damn drag of his entire life and he's savoring the blow of gray plumes out his mouth when she plucks it from out between his fingers.

"Hey, I was smoking that."

"It's my last one, so we're going to have to split it," she chides.

" My last one, you mean."

Dane sticks the cigarra in the corner of her mouth, grins ruefully and in that moment she looks about the furthest possible thing from a Jedi.

"Are they treating you okay in here?" she asks.

"Ah yeah, service is great. You should see the scrub baths they give me."

"Last I smelled you, you needed a good scrubbing."

Not for the first time does the thought pass through Atton's head that he doesn't understand her at all. Distant and reserved one moment, amiable the next. They're days off a nonstop cesspool of destruction and chaos, and she's in here trading barbs back and forth with him like all of that was nothing more than a dream to blink away come the morning. Like he didn't just profess his love for her in a puddle of his own damn blood. Maybe she hadn't heard him? Maybe his declaration had been so garbled and incomprehensible that she just didn't understand him? Maybe it really all was one big messed up dream. Truth be told he hasn't exactly figured out if that's for the better, that maybe some small masochistic part of him wanted her to hear him.

He's lying there with his cheek pressed against his pillow, quietly watching her smoke when the strain of craning his neck to actually look at her square on starts to hurt. "Hey Dane, do you uh - mind sitting on the other side of me?"

"What, am I blocking your view?" She jeers, but then sobers immediately and ducks her head. "Oh because of- oh yeah, of course. Sorry, not used to it yet."

"You and me both, " he mumbles.

She gets up and drags her chair to the opposite side of the bed, and suddenly he's self conscious and more aware of his injury than ever. His blood tightens and when he speaks again, it comes from a guarded part of him that he's been repressing. "Don't think I'll ever be able to shoot again. Flying is also in question."

"You will." And the way she says it is so forthright and resolute that he almost believes her. It's the firm affirmation of a superior. The General.

Atton stares up at the ceiling. "Dane c'mon, I'm half blind now, the lack of depth perception alone-"

"Kreia was blind. Visas doesn't have eyes as we understand them, but she can see just fine."

"I can barely lift a stone across the room, you know that. How the hell am I supposed to use the force to see?"

She's just as stubborn as he is, and he knows she can do this forever. He's always liked that about her, that headache inducing tenacity. "Telekinesis isn't a measure of force potential. I'm shit at healing, that doesn't mean I can't use the force for other things. Atton, look at me."

He resists and when he does she reaches over and takes his chin in her hand, turning his face to her and exposing the still swollen purple side of his brow where an angry red burn dips into the hollow of his bandaged socket. He knows it looks a hundred times worse turned to the light like this and he silently cringes. She doesn't flinch.

"You fought a Sith Lord-"

"I lost," he interrupts flatly.

Her grip on his chin tightens. The cigarra fizzles in her other hand, forgotten. " You fought a Sith Lord and lived to tell about it. You stared evil in the eye in that temple on Dxun and told it to take a hike. You didn't trust Kreia from the getgo and I should have listened to you, should have given your instincts more credit. You're a powerful force user with intuition greater than most Jedi I've known; as your mentor, as your friend, I am so proud of you."

He takes several deep breaths and blinks to stem the surge but it's already too late. Tears begin to prick his one good eye, sliding from the corner and down his right temple. For the first time in twenty years, Atton Rand begins to cry in front of another person.

It's the culmination of decades worth of mistakes, wrongdoings and repressed emotions, of brushing death and losing a part of himself that he didn't know he could mourn, but this steadfast belief from another person had been the last drop in a cup that was already nearing overflow. His body doesn't rack with sobs, nor does he even make a sound save for short staccato intakes of breath, but it's the most genuine emotion he's displayed for someone in a long time.

And when he looks at Dane, her face is terrified. Twisted and shocked like he's done something repulsive. His cheeks flush with a tide blood and he lifts an arm to rub the tears away, combating a mix of anger and shame. The breadth of the silence that follows is the longest one of Atton's life. This is the worst possible scenario he could have envisioned.

"I should go." He can't catch her eye as she stands, can't do anything but gape listlessly after her like some kind of idiot. "It's late." Was it? He has no concept of time in this monochromatic cell of a room, just the dim and glow cycle of the fluorescent lighting.

When Dane reaches the door, she turns back to him and he wonders if he only imagines finding traces of remorse in her otherwise vacant expression.

"Get some sleep, Atton," she says like it's an order. And then she's gone.


End file.
